marriage divorce

In a new study conducted in Australia, Zlatko Skrbis and colleagues interviewed about 7,000 adolescents about their expectations about marriage, cohabitation and divorce. They write,

“The results presented here have shown that young people do not overwhelmingly expect to experience non-traditional life pathways in the manner suggested by proponents of the individualization thesis. Furthermore, our findings indicate that those who do display these non-traditional values and expectations are likely to vary with respect to school sector and gender. Stronger claims about de-institutionalization, which emphasize the emergence of a reflexive subject that is free of the constraints of social structure of any kind, are not entirely borne out here.”

This figure that is taken from a Census Bureau report that summarizes marriage and divorce patterns in the US illustrates what has been happening over time with the divorce rate. In this figure you see that the percentage of men who are 30 years old who are divorced has been going down. Those born between 1960-64 had the highest percentage of divorce and all those born after this time have had a lower rate of divorce. Those men who were in 1970-1974 are approaching the same rates of divorce as men born in the 1940s. The pattern is similar for men at ages 35. We don’t have the data for the men at 40, but the pattern is likely to be the same.